This is Geistlist: Things for People by Jacob.
Some of you know my mom died at 9:55am last Thursday, in the living room. I was sleeping in at the Lansdale Holiday Inn by the new turnpike entrance, 20 minutes away, after a long week talking to her and deciding if she was conscious, waiting for death to happen. She was with Dad and a sister or two (later confirmed to be two of three). Within an hour, we were all there.
She had had cancer in her brain a long time, and it finally found the stem. We put her body in her favorite red shorts and strawberry top and waited for the laboratory to which she donated herself, who sent men with a minivan. I helped lift, while we laughed and played September and danced and cried. An advantage of donating your body to science is plenty of time for your loved ones to grieve and the potential for them to see you in the same Houghton Mifflin biology textbooks you taught from one day at Souderton Area High School, if you taught at your son’s alma mater.
A memorial service will be 3pm Saturday November 18 at Zion Mennonite Church in Souderton, PA. If any of you want to organize or join a carpool or need pickup from Trenton, reply and I’ll get you all in touch. Please do not feel awkward attending. If you are reading this, you have some sense of me, and she created that. Her name was Valerie, and you are invited to celebrate her.